Planning a Deployment Mode

Native mode, including native mode with SharePoint Web Parts, where a report server runs as an application server that provides all processing and management capability exclusively through Reporting Services components.

SharePoint integrated mode, where a report server is deployed as part of a SharePoint server farm.

In native mode, a report server is a stand-alone application server that provides all viewing, management, processing, and delivery of reports and report models. This is the default mode for report server instances. You can install a native mode report server that is configured during setup or you can configure it for native mode operations are Setup is finished.

In SharePoint integrated mode, a report server must run within a SharePoint server farm. A SharePoint site provides the front-end access to report server content and operations. The report server provides all report processing and rendering.

For deployments that have simple integration requirements, you can consider using SharePoint Web Parts as an alternative to SharePoint integrated mode. Reporting Services provides two Web Parts that you can install and register on an instance of Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 or later, or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or later. From a SharePoint site, you can use the Web Parts to find and view reports that are stored and processed on a report server that runs in native mode. These Web parts were introduced in earlier releases of Reporting Services. For more information about how the native mode Web Parts compare with SharePoint integrated mode features, see Planning for SharePoint Integration.

Report server modes are mutually exclusive. You can switch modes by reconfiguring the report server database connection to point to a database that stores application data in the format expected for a given mode, but there is no supported approach for migrating content between database types. For more information about how to configure an existing report server instance to run in SharePoint integrated mode, see How to: Switch Server Modes (Reporting Services Configuration).